


An Idol Thought

by internetname



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sam Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, a little humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2020-11-22 04:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20868137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/internetname/pseuds/internetname
Summary: Sam Winchester has saved the world a couple times, so when he realizes two of the three people he loves most in the world could make each other happy, he's up for the challenge. He hopes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sam/gifts).

Sam Winchester had always looked up to his older brother. He couldn’t imagine not doing it.

Dean Winchester was, well, seriously, Dean Fucking Winchester. Dean had raised him while their father was off chasing the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Dean had brought him back into the life Sam now realized he should never have tried to leave.

Dean had swapped his soul for Sam. Dean had been in Hell and come out sane. Dean was the Sword of Michael. Dean had led an angel to fall in order to save the world. Dean had survived a year in Purgatory. Dean had beaten the Mark of Cain. Dean had told God off to His face for being a dick. Dean had saved the world by talking that God and Amara into having a family reunion.

And yeah, even better from Sam’s point of view, Dean had been a brother supporting Sam when he jumped into the Cage with Lucifer inside him. Dean had insisted on returning Sam’s soul, which turned out to be the right call. Dean had backed him during the trials to close the gates of Hell, and then done everything to keep Sam alive instead. Dean had even, incredibly, shrugged his shoulders and taken his brother’s lead when it was Sam’s time to be in charge.

Dean was, in short, the reason for pretty much everything in Sam’s life. Dean was the reason he was Sam Fucking Winchester.

So one day, while Jack was reading, Dean was sleeping, and Castiel was doing whatever it was Castiel did when they weren’t saving the world, Sam sat down on his bed with a brand new composition book and decided he would make his brother happy.

When the idea first occurred to him, Sam had almost dismissed it. Happiness for a hunter? Good luck with that.

But right after that, Sam had felt indignant. He had once believed that Dean could be happy, could have an apple pie life. When had that stopped?

Sam wasn’t worried about himself so much. His heart was much more open than Dean’s. He’d loved Jessica, Madison, and Amelia. He’d even felt a bizarre and twisted sort of love for Ruby, that demon bitch. It didn’t make him shallow to know he could likely find another woman to love.

But Dean.

Dean, his brother. His deeply beloved brother.

Dean had sealed up his heart after Lisa and Ben, and though he’d made comments and flirted with basically anything since then, Sam knew his brother had decided he was done with finding a better half.

Sam hated that idea. He hated that so many hunters were absolutely determined to survive yet had completely given up on living. They were like anti-zombies, dead set on saving the world even as their own lives become nothing but death.

No.

No, damn it.

Not for his brother.

Not for Dean Fucking Winchester.

So, here he was, sitting with his brand-new, pristine composition book, and Sam was going to figure this out.

Sam was going to make it so Dean could be happy.


	2. Chapter 2

First, Sam wrote down just what he thought Dean needed.

  1. _ A life partner who’s also a romantic partner._

And then he waited to think of a second entry to his list.

And he waited some more.

Dean didn’t want money, or fame, or power. Dean didn’t want material things that had no sentimental value. Dean loved a hamburger, but that wasn’t really the sort of happiness Sam was thinking about.

In a dream world Michael had kept Dean happy with ownership of a run-down bar, warm and safe and dry while a thunderstorm raged outside. And Michael had added Pamela, a completely self-reliant, self-expressive woman who hadn’t been a romantic partner.

Why hadn’t Dean been together romantically with that fantasy Pamela? She was totally Dean’s type.

Maybe it was just too much trouble for Michael to make up some Mrs. Dean. She’d have to be quite something to have been believable. Maybe the archangel just hadn’t wanted to bother.

And it was worth remembering that breaking Dean out of that mental loop and explaining that his “dream come true” was just a dream had taken all of about sixty seconds.

So the bar, the autonomy, the shelter from the storm—none of that was going to make Dean happy in the real world.

Dean needed what Michael couldn’t fake.

Dean needed a romantic partner as close to him as Sam was as a brother.

In a very weird moment, Sam sort of got the _Supernatural_ fans out there who wrote stories about Dean and Sam together, as in “together.” It was still “yuck,” yeah, but he kind of got it. What woman could stroll into their lives and be a partner to Dean without making his brother feel like she was replacing Sam?

Sam thought about it some more. He’d been able to love women because he simply never compared their connection to what he had with Dean. Dean was just this whole other thing—brother/parent/wingman/mentor/friend. As such, Sam could keep his bond with Dean the way anyone could adore their parent and then add someone to their heart.

But with Dean.

Damn it.

Sam wasn’t a parent or a son to Dean. He was a brother and partner. Whoever made a permanent place in Dean’s life had to deal with that. Dean needed a romantic partner who added to rather than subtracted from his relationship with his brother.

It was something Sam had thought about before. He’d even had a class at Stanford that had talked about it based on an old barbershop quartet favorite, “Wedding Bells Are Breaking up That Old Gang of Mine.”

That day in class, a woman whose name Sam couldn’t remember for the life of him had done a presentation on that song and compared it both to fraternity parties and the social behavior of young dolphin males.

Like fraternity brothers, she’d noted with PowerPoint going strong, young male dolphins spent time together roaming the seas and doing stunts to impress each other. In fact, very much like frat brothers passing around a joint, dolphins in such groups loved finding a pufferfish. The deadly toxins in pufferfish actually made the dolphins (and humans who ate the fish as fugu) high in trace amounts. The dolphins would pass the bewildered pufferfish around, each holding the deadly creature in their mouths to “get a hit,” until they’d all had a turn.

Sometimes, a dolphin would chew a little too hard on the pufferfish, killing it, and then himself from the resulting release of toxin. But that just seemed to be part of the game. When all went well, the dolphins would let the fish go and flop around in a sort of daze while the molested fish got away as fast as it could.

Sam knew that more than one psychology academic he’d known at Stanford would say he and Dean had spent the past dozen years in a state of arrested development. Young men were supposed to spend time together burning off some testosterone, and then they were supposed to settle down, start a family, and basically do what Sam had wanted to do with Jessica and Dean had tried to do with Lisa and Ben.

Sam knew their personal, domestic issues were nothing in the face of saving the world a time or two or three, and he personally didn’t believe his development had been arrested at all. He and Dean, if anything, were old for their ages, considering what they’d seen and done. Too old.

It was something of an understatement to say Dean hadn’t had good luck with women. Cassie had rejected him when she learned about his life, and in her own way, Lisa had done the same.

And then there were the women who’d been a part of their hunting lives: Jo, Ellen, Charlie, the real Pamela, Eileen—the carnage turned Sam’s stomach.

Sam looked down again at the notebook with its one sentence.

  1. _ A life partner who’s also a romantic partner._

And that’s when it first occurred to him that something should have occurred to him a while ago.

Castiel.

At the thought, Sam waited for his body to gag, his brain to short-circuit, and his soul to run off screaming.

But they didn’t. Sam started to wonder next why he’d thought they would.

Yeah, there was a little bit of concern in there that Cass was, sort of, a man. But it was definitely more the angel thing, except he knew about Dean and Anna and their time together, and she had been an angel.

So, what was it?

Dean and Benny—bleh.

Well, Benny was a vampire. OK.

Dean and Jo—bleh.

She was way too young.

Dean and Jody—bleh.

Jody was like a mom.

Dean and Donna.

Oh, that just made him laugh. She’d send his ass packing.

Dean and . . . Lily?

Too vengeful.

Dean and older Lily?

Too old.

Sam frowned at himself, but stood by it. Lily after she stopped using her magic wasn’t just mature, she was used up.

So, Dean and Castiel.

Ah, now Sam understood his initial reaction: Castiel was their brother. Sam loved Cass deeply himself as a brother-in-arms.

But seriously, was there anyone better for Dean than Cass?

Now he was writing quickly.

_H1. Castiel for Dean_

  1. _Castiel is hard to kill._
  2. _Castiel loves Dean._
  3. _Castiel knows all about the hunting life._
  4. _Castiel isn’t going to want Dean to give up hunting._
  5. _Castiel isn’t going to want to quit hunting and raise a family._
  6. _Castiel and I are close in a way that causes no issues._
  7. _Castiel already lives with us._
  8. _Castiel knows everything about Dean and is still here._
  9. _Castiel really loves Dean, right?_

Sam frowned and turned to a new page.

_H2. Castiel loves Dean_

  1. _Castiel rebelled for Dean (but then, C didn’t want the world to end)_
  2. _Castiel was really pissed off when Dean was going to say yes to Michael. (But then, that would have led to a battle with Lucifer)_
  3. _Castiel said he and Dean have a “more profound bond” (might be angel speak)_
  4. _Even when Castiel was fighting Raphael and dealing with Crowley, he watched over me and Dean. (Might be more a brother-in-arms thing.)_
  5. _Castiel offered to go with Dean to meet Amara, which he thought would mean dying with him. (Yeah, big one. Even Chuck thought that was something, going by his expression.)_
  6. _Castiel heals Dean quickly whenever he sees him. I’m guessing this includes his liver. (But he heals me too.)_
  7. _C protected D in Purgatory._
  8. _C didn’t kill D even though Naomi was mind-controlling him. (What did break that mind control, anyway?)_
  9. _C helped us, but mostly Dean, with the Leviathans even though he was kinda nuts at the time._
  10. _C apologized to D about trying to be God and said he’d made it up to him._
  11. _Balthazar said C was in love with D. (But B was an asshole.)_
  12. _C came to help me with D even though he was dying from lack of grace._
  13. _C lives with us in a frickin’ bunker. He’s not doing it for me. He might just be doing it for himself._
  14. _The way Castiel looks at D._

Sam paused.

And he thought about it, running through his memories. Then he wrote it.

  1. _The way D looks at C._

For the next hour, Sam looked at his composition book. One page was entitled:

_H3: Castiel doesn’t love Dean._

All he had was:

  1. _Castiel is an angel._

And on his next page:

_H4: Dean doesn’t love Castiel._

All he had was:

  1. _Castiel is a man-shaped angel._

Sam found himself flipping to the next blank page:

_RQ 1: What kind of intimacy does D need most?_

_RQ 2: If D knew C loved him, would physical stuff matter?_

Sam cringed, but he really didn’t want to write “Dean” and “sex” in the same sentence.

Then he wrote the sentence that mattered the most:

_H5: Dean and Castiel could make each other happy._

It was late. Sam put his book away in his nightstand drawer and went to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

First thing, Sam hit the lore.

He had more than he usually did when he hit the books. He knew there was precedent for angels and humans having physical relations, and not just because of Dean and Anna. While Lily Sunder hadn’t actually had a child with Benjamin, and Lucifer’s tryst with Kelly didn’t really matter for its own reasons, Sam knew Castiel had once killed a Nephilim, so her parents had Done It. Also, enough angels and humans had gotten together that there was a word for their kids in the first place (even if they were supposed to be an abomination).

But sex, children or not, wasn’t really the focus of Sam’s research. He wanted something more long-term and emotionally solid. He was also hoping for something more “Cinderella” than “Romeo and Juliet.” Hell, at this point he’d settle for _Shrek_.

Now, there was a thought. Cass had been human once before. Would he do it again to be with Dean? More to the point, would he have to?

Sam’s instincts didn’t like the sound of that. Chewing on his pen, Sam’s reasoning liked it even less. Castiel wasn’t human. Even without his grace, it was more a question of being “mortal” than being human. A human could suck up an angel’s grace all they liked. At best, it would kill them quickly. Castiel was also incredibly old, and clever, and skilled.

Sam knew he and Dean and Jack tended to forget about it, but Castiel was and always would be God’s warrior. He thought like a soldier and acted like a soldier. His moves were strategic, and when he needed to be, he could be colder than a human.

Sam thought about Castiel’s torture of demons. He thought about Castiel from the alternate universe whom AU Charlie had described. She’d literally been unable to quantify the pain of that interrogation. And their own Cass had tortured as well. Donatello sprang to mind.

Except for when he’d been full of Purgatory’s souls, Castiel never boasted about his position with other angels. But Sam and his brother had been able to read between the lines. Somehow, Castiel had gotten rid of a number of particularly dickish angels. And they had seen him fight, using that angel blade like a damn lightsaber.

Castiel-as-human would only be a pretense, grace or not.

Sam didn’t see much future in Dean-as-angel, either.

If Castiel and Dean were going to get together (Sam thought “Deastiel” and snickered), it would have to be as they were, angel and man. Man-looking angel and man.

OK, so it was time to stop dicking around and get to the real issue (well, one of the real issues). Would Dean have sex with a man . . . ish person?

Was Castiel’s male vessel a deal-breaker?

Sam knew, if Castiel’s vessel were female, Dean would have been all over that about a dozen times, if not more. Damn, Sam might have . . . no, OK. He didn’t want to go there. Thinking about Castiel in whatever form really was like thinking about a sibling.

But Cass and Dean and their “more profound bond” wasn’t just about brothers-in-arms. No way. The two of them could get into an argument and forget there was anybody else in the room. Dean and Cass both got their feelings hurt whenever the other said the slightest thing. And frankly, if eye-fucking were the same as the physical thing, there’d be a little blue-eyed, beer-guzzling Nephilim running around being an abomination all night long.

Sam frowned. That metaphor should have worked, but it didn’t.

Anyway. Whereas Dean had only been with women, as far as Sam knew, which was far enough, Castiel might just be the exception.

Sam flashed suddenly to the high school girl in a Castiel costume singing, “I’ll just wait here then.” Mind-boggling as it was, Castiel really had said that and then waited by the side of the road for four hours to end up saving Dean from Zachariah (and saving Dean and Sam’s partnership as well).

“Human” Castiel had had sex with April, and Castiel had let them know a few times he was “utterly indifferent to sexual orientation.” If Dean were willing, Sam seriously doubted the angel would mind than Dean was a man.

Sam scribbled some more in his notebook, trying to distinguish what he knew from what he felt from what he could prove.

  1. _Angels can have sex._
  2. _Angels in general and Cass in particular don’t care about sexual orientation._
  3. _Dean’s had sex with angel, just not Cass (or a male vessel)._
  4. _Cass has had sex and enjoyed it._
  5. _Cass wasn’t interested in having sex with the professional girl, Chastity, when he was an angel—but then, professional._

Looking down at his latest list, it bothered him that there was so much about sex in it. Sex wasn’t the point here. Well, it sort of was, in that Dean could never be happy the way Sam wanted him to be happy in a relationship without it.

And Cass, Sam realized. He was almost as invested in making Cass happy as he was Dean.

God, Cass had done so much for them. They would not have been able to stop the Apocalypse without him, and that was just Page One.

Sam thought about the first time he and Cass had gotten to the same level of friendship the angel and Dean shared, when he’d talked about what it meant to be human and given Sam hope that he could change. He thought about when Cass had come back from not just the dead but the Empty, standing at the pay telephone in a smelly back alley.

He thought next about the time Castiel had come to them, cursed by Rowena and still covered with the evidence of his torture at the hands of other angels. He thought about Cass coming out of the motel bathroom all cleaned up from Purgatory. He thought about getting drunk with them over Jack’s death.

Then Sam realized why he was flashing to all those moments: They were highly emotional, deeply affectionate, even passionate, but they hadn’t resulted in Dean and Cass declaring their love for each other and going to bed.

Was Sam supposed to come up with something more miraculous than coming back from the Empty? Something more touching than having Dean wrap up Cass in a blanket like that would keep the black magic from driving him insane? Something more inhibition-lowering than drinking six bottles of whiskey?

If their lives so far hadn’t gotten Dean and Cass together, what the hell exactly was supposed to do the trick?

A thousand scenarios went through Sam’s brain like a slide show in hyperspace. Romantic dinners by candlelight, longs walks on the beach, window shopping in some quaint village, dancing in the rain, leaving love notes in lunch boxes, making out in the balcony of a movie theater, picking wildflowers, gazing at the sunset, kisses at the top of a Ferris wheel, Dean strumming the guitar and singing—

Holding his stomach, Sam burst into laughter, rolling around a bit on his narrow bed. It was juvenile, maybe, but the thought of Castiel standing on a balcony in the moonlight did not allow any other response.

When he sobered up, though, he was still clueless.

He turned to a fresh page in his notebook.

  1. _Dean and Castiel love each other, but not romantically._

With a frown, he crossed that out.

  1. _Dean and Castiel love each other, but not sexually/romantically._
  2. _D & C have had over a dozen super-dramatic moments, but they haven’t ended in declarations of sexual/romantic love._
    1. _They’ve barely ended in declarations of “We’re family, bro.”_
    2. _Do they want them to end in more?_
  3. _What does Cass want?_

That last one was good, Sam thought with a nod. Dean himself wasn’t the puzzle here, but what about Cass?

New page:

  1. _Castiel has never been in romantic/sexual love. He would have said._
  2. _Castiel was called “top of the Christmas tree” and was leader of the Earth garrison and was chosen to save the Righteous Man from hell, so he was respected in Heaven._
    1. _We’ve never met an angel that liked Cass except for that lieutenant woman when he was fighting in the angel civil war, and then we never saw her again. Same with Hannah, except we know Hannah betrayed him. _
    2. _Yes, he had followers from all the cast-down angels, but they were followers, not friends._
      1. _See “torture” above._
    3. _Has Cass known any sort of love at all??? Before us?_

Now, there was a thought. As old as Cass was, the sort of affect—love that the angel had known with Dean and him, to say nothing of with Jack, was obviously completely new to him.

God, no wonder Castiel preferred humans to angels. What would that even be like? To fight alongside his brothers and sisters for thousands of years and have no bond? To know no love at all?

Sam was abruptly certain. If Dean told Cass he wanted more from their relationship, Cass would be on board. Maybe it wouldn’t be for all the right reasons, but then, Dean and he weren’t exactly poster boys for good emotional health either.

Sam flipped back a few pages and thought again about those times Dean and Cass could have fallen into each other’s arms. This time, he noticed they had something in common: While they were deeply dramatic, they were also the opposite of the meet-cutes and clichés of romance he’d listed on the other page.

But then, it wasn’t like the four of them had never had fun together, was it? Sam could think of a good four or five times they’d done something enjoyable together. Well, sort of.

This wasn’t helping, and though he turned to another fresh page in his notebook, nothing new came to mind.

It took five days before Sam cracked.

Late at night and after making absolutely sure Dean and Jack were asleep and Cass was reading some _Saturday Evening Post_ in the storage room, Sam opened up his laptop, went to a fan site, and scanned the fanfic archive.

A few hours later, he had a page of notes.

  1. _Angel pon farr?_
  2. _Forced to share a bed. (Castiel needs to sleep for some reason.)_
  3. _Fake boyfriends for a case._
  4. _Love potions._
  5. _If someone took a paddle to Dean’s ass, he’d hunt them down and kill them._
  6. _What’s this obsession with Dean and pink silk panties? _
  7. _Omega? Mpreg???_
  8. _Charlie sets them up._
  9. _Sam ships it???_
    1. _Mostly locks them up in a closet or something_
    2. _Just leaves the room a lot—not that easy!_
  10. _Castiel’s previous vessel was female?_
  11. _They do know the “sex dungeon” thing is a joke, right?_
  12. _Erotic dreams and Cass knows._
  13. _Bird mating displays_
    1. _Wingfic_
    2. _Massages & Grooming_
    3. _Does Cass groom?_
  14. _Dean a virgin? Are these people for real?_
  15. _Chuck sets them up. _
    1. _They’d never trust it._

Sam winced, thinking about Eileen.

  1. _Case fic not going to work or it would have worked._
  2. _Me and Gabriel??? WTF?_
  3. _More with the wings._
  4. _Famine didn’t make them sexual with each other. _
    1. _Is this just a bad idea?_
  5. _Some of this stuff is really kinky._
  6. _Love spells from Rowena._
  7. _ It’s all about the talking._
    1. _Dean would rather die than talk like that._

With great relief, Sam closed the laptop, a real plan starting to hatch in his mind. He was going to do the most dangerous thing he could think of because, if it didn’t work, Dean was going to kill him.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, Dean and Jack woke Sam up with a case, which turned out to be wraith, which sucked, and so it was over a week before they were all back in the bunker. Cass had had to heal them all up, which took all Cass had and more.

All in all, it was ten days after Sam knew what he had to do before he could actually start doing it.

It started, awkwardly, with Jack. 

“Your room?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

Jack looked around the library with a frown. Dean was in the kitchen making the perfect burger, and Castiel was watching him.

“To talk?” Jack asked.

“Just for a moment.”

Jack looked at him with slightly narrowed eyes. “You don’t sound like it’s going to be just for a moment.”

“Maybe a few minutes, then. I mean, you’re right. It’s important. But I just want to talk to you about something.”

“Something secret?”

“More like something private, for now.”

Jack frowned. “There is a great difference between secret and private. I understand.” Then he moved toward Sam’s room, Sam in tow.

Inside Sam’s room, Sam took the desk chair, and Jack perched on the edge of his bed, expectant.

And Sam had no idea how to start.

“You seem very troubled,” Jack said. “Is this about someone dying?”

“No.” Sam shook his head, glad he could start on familiar ground. “No, nobody’s dying, as far as know.”

“Are you and Dean having one of your fights?”

Sam scowled at him. “No.” Then he had to acknowledge it was a fair question. “No, Dean and I are fine. But it is about Dean that I want to talk to you—well, Dean and Cass.”

“Castiel?” Jack did that Cass-like head-tilt thing that was the sort of adorable Sam would never admit to. “What about them?”

“OK, so, you know that Cass and Dean have, um, a profound bond, right?”

“We’re all a part of that,” Jack said with heart-melting conviction. “We’re family.”

“Yes, absolutely.” Sam let himself smile. “But Dean and Cass, you’ve noticed, maybe, they’re a little extra close? They share something that’s just them?”

“Dean and Cass?” Jack tilted his head again, considering. “When I found you, I mean, a few hours after I was born, Dean was so angry. I only knew him that way, as an angry, and now I know grieving man. He was eventually kind to me, and accepting. I was grateful for his acceptance. But after Castiel returned, Dean was…” He frowned.

“Jubilant.”

Jack nodded, smiling a little. “Yes. It wasn’t just the cowboys and Dodge City. He was happy. I had never seen that before in him.” Jack thought for a moment. “That was why he hated me in the beginning. He blamed me for getting Castiel killed.”

“He didn’t hate you.”

“No, he did. And I didn’t blame him.”

“Jack.”

“But it was all right, Sam.” Jack smiled at him with that odd little-kid, old-man smile. “In the end, I knew I had three fathers who love me. Castiel loves me completely, without question. He started to love me when he felt my fetus in Kelly’s stomach. You love me, and you see yourself in me. And Dean loves me because I brought Cass back and because I want to be good in spite of my father and all that has happened to me.”

“What do you think of Dean and Cass getting together romantically?” Sam blurted out.

“Romantically?”

“Yes. If Dean and Cass became a couple, what would you think about that?”

Jack thought about that for longer than Sam was expecting.

“Dean and Cass are my parents,” he said at last. “Many people’s parents are married.” He shrugged. “That would make me just more like other people, and I do like that.”

“So you wouldn’t mind?” Sam asked.

“Mind?” Jack was frowning at him again.

Sam started to respond, but then closed his mouth. Jack was right. This wasn’t a question of whether he minded that two of his three fathers were romantically involved.

“Would you like it?” Sam said next. “Would you like it if they were happy together?”

“I think I would like anything that made Dean or Castiel happy.” Jack considered his own words for a moment. “It’s dangerous to say I would like ‘anything,’ but Dean and Cass wouldn’t be happy with anything bad, so I think I can say ‘anything’ and be safe. So I think I would like anything that made them happy.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking that Dean and Cass might be able to make each other happy.”

“By being a romantically involved couple?”

“Yes.”

Jack thought about this for a while.

“You’re saying that Dean and Castiel could love each other romantically. However, I know that they have known each other over twelve years, and they have not done this.”

“Yes.”

“Were you thinking of some sort of love spell?”

“What?”

“Or perhaps locking them together in a closet?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

Sam took a breath, then another. “I’m going to talk to them.”

Jack nodded slowly. “And how can I help?”

“Well, no offense, Jack. But I think the fewer spectators the better.”

“So you would like me to make myself scarce, is that right?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Jack thought about that. “Dean and Castiel, if they could make each other happy, that would be a good thing.” He nodded. “Just let me know when, and I will stay in my room.”

Sam shrugged. “Well, they’re both in the kitchen, and we don’t currently have a case.”

Jack nodded. “I have a book I want to read.”

Sam nodded. “That works.”

About ten minutes later, Sam walked into the kitchen. Dean was now eating his burger and talking to Cass about what he thought the angels might have done to Bobby. Cass, an untouched burger on his own plate, was saying he didn’t know.

“Hey, uh, guys,” Sam started, sitting down at the table with them. “Got a minute? Something I’ve been wanting to talk to you both about.”

“Sammy, I’ve told you,” Dean said around a mouth of beef and bun and bacon, “no rabbit food.”

“No, it’s not about that.”

“What’s troubling you, Sam?” Castiel asked.

“Well, it’s not so much that it’s troubling me as it’s been on my mind for a while.”

“Sam,” Dean groaned.

“I’ve been thinking about happiness and you two.”

“Me and Cass and happiness?”

“Yes.” Sam opens his mouth to say more, then closes it.

“Happiness isn’t really what we do, Sammy,” Dean says. Then his eyes go keen. “Are you talking about a girl? Is this about Eileen?”

Sam is irritated enough to find his words again. “No, this is about you and Cass.”

“OK, me and Cass what?”

“I think you shouldthinkaboutgettingtogether.”

Castiel frowned at him. “What?”

“You and Dean,” Sam said, then looked at his brother. “And you and Cass.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Did you lose your soul again?”

“Guys, listen to me. I know it sounds a little crazy at first.”

“Sam, what the hell?!”

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” Sam said. “And I really think the two of you—”

“Sam, is this is some way to strike out at your brother—”

“Strike out at me? What about you?”

Castiel closes his mouth with a frown.

“What about me?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “C’mon, man. You’re an angel.”

“You hooked up with Anna,” Sam says.

“Back when she was human!”

“And Cass—”

“Back when he was human!”

“You two love each other!” Sam shouted.

Two pairs of eyes, one green, one blue, looked back at him. Both looked more than a little weirded out.

Castiel, of course, recovered first. “Dean is heterosexual.”

“And you’re not actually a guy.”

Dean, Sam noticed, was pressing his fists into his eyes.

“I do not believe that to be important,” Castiel said, his deep-gravel voice as steady as ever. “Dean and I—”

“If you were in a female vessel, Dean would have married you years ago.”

Cass frowned again. “Angels don’t get married.”

“Dean would have been your exception.”

“Sammy, honestly, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m looking at two of three people I care most about in the world and telling them they could be happy.”

“Dude! I’m cool with a guy who wants that, but—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have hooked up with Cass already if his vessel were female.”

“Sam.” Castiel’s voice was pretty much as angry as Sam had ever heard it. “Dean’s sexual orientation is not fluid. He can’t just decide to be attracted to a male body any more than I can get my wings back.”

“We are brothers, Sam. You know that!”

“But you could be more if you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to, and neither does Cass!”

Sam looked over at the angel in question. Castiel looked back.

“Is that correct, Cass?”

“Yes.” Castiel nodded sagely. “Dean would never want to get physical with a human male body.”

Dean pointed a finger, which then dipped slightly. He looked at the angel, then back at Sam, then back at Castiel.

A good ten seconds went by in silence.

“You’re an angel,” Dean finally said.

“Yes.” Castel scowled. A few more beats went by. “You know that.”

“So,” Dean said. “That’s that.”

“That’s what?” Castiel asked.

“That the, you know, end of what Sam is talking about.”

“I’m not sure I understand what Sam is talking about.”

Dean nodded.

“Unless he means the two of us should start having sex.”

Dean coughed.

“Which is completely out of the question,” Cass continued.

Dean nodded while coughing.

“Because you are heterosexual,” Cass said.

Dean wheezed out, “So are you!”

Castiel frowned. “I’m an angel, Dean. We don’t have genders or gender-based preferences of any kind.”

“You call them your brothers and sisters!” the hunter gasped.

“Dean, I think you need a glass of water.”

Dean shook his head and then drained his current bottle of beer in three large swallows. The bottle went back on the table with a soft _bang_, and then he shook his head, took a breath, and continued, “You’re a guy, right? I mean, deep down at the base. You’re a guy, right?”

The angel frowned. “My identity is not complex or in conflict, Dean.”

“Which means?”

Cass shrugged. “Angels are just angels.”

Then, to Sam’s astonishment, Castiel looked off to the right.

“Cass?” Sam asked. “What are you not telling us?”

A blue-eyed scowl answer him, then a shrug, then a deeper-than-usual hunch of Castiel’s shoulders.

“At our initial nativity, perhaps because God, Chuck, was already thinking of humans, most of us did feel a certain pull toward a gender identity. And I did feel, I believe, a certain bias toward being masculine. I understand that others of my brothers and sisters also felt such a pull.”

“So you knew you were a man from the beginning,” Dean said.

Castiel glowered at the pristine burger in front of him. Sam had to admit it did look pretty good. Dean had added avocado this time.

“That’s not the issue, Dean. And in terms of my existence with vessels, I have spent more time in a female vessel than a male.” He looked up. “But that’s not important or relevant. I am currently in what was the body of Jimmy Novak.”

Sam waited, but Cass didn’t continue.

“Right,” Dean took up. “And Jimmy’s not in there anymore.”

“No.”

“So.” Dean nodded his head a bit back and forth. “You feel like a man.”

Cass tilted his head. “I feel like an angel, Dean.”

“But you feel like a male angel!”

“Angels are neither male nor—”

“Cass!” Dean leaned forward over the table. “You are a male angel right now. Right? You’re Jimmy Novak-style, male angel!”

Cass looked, of all things, hurt, but then he cleaned his face. “I am doing my best to honor Jimmy Novak’s life, Dean, which includes looking after his daughter. But if you are asking if I ‘feel’ particularly male or female, the answer is no.”

“Which means what?”

Castiel looked over at Sam, who shrugged, then back at Dean to ask, “What?”

“Look, are you a man or not?”

“No, I’m an angel.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

Castiel raised his chin up a bit, then down, a maestro calling on the orchestra for silence.

“There is no need for this,” he said quietly, his voice a low purr. “I know that you are not sexually interested in men. Nothing else needs to be said on the matter.”

“You’re damn right nothing else needs to be said!” Dean looked at his empty beer bottle, shot up from the table, and stalked over to the icebox to get another one, looked inside and then closed it.

Dean turned around.

“What are we all talking about right now that I don’t get?”

Sam sat back in his chair and crossed his arms

Castiel just frowned at them both and said nothing.

“Oh, no, no.,” Dean said. “No meaningful silences here. What is going on?”

“Castiel,” Sam said, trying to be as open as he could. “If you don’t want to answer this question, I know I have no right to ask it. But you, if it were completely up to you, would you—”

“Sam, shut the hell up!”

“Why, Dean?” He rounded on his brother like he had his knife out for a demon. “What exactly are you afraid to hear Cass say?”

“Sam,” the angel in question cut in. “I think you should stop this now.”

“Why?” Sam stared at him in defiance, heart thumping with hope.

Castiel looked down and shook his head. “I do understand what you’re trying to do. I even appreciate it. But Dean is the man he is _as_ he is. I believe the universe, let alone his own brother, would be foolish to ask him to change such a fundamental aspect of himself.”

Dean looked both puzzled at the sentence and uncomfortable at the praise, much to Sam’s not-surprise. “I’m still not getting why this is all about me.” He shot Cass a wary look. “You’re not saying you’re willing to—I mean, I guess you are saying.”

More awkward seconds ticked by, then Dean gave himself a full-body shake.

“OK, you’re not really a guy. I get it.” He nodded, then looked at his brother. “Good talk, Sam. Glad we cleared things up.” He stood, turned, and walked out of the kitchen.

Cass watched him go, then looked at Sam.

“Anything else on your mind?”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam made and ate breakfast before he went looking for his brother, who, it turned out, had grabbed Jack and gone on a supply run. He ended up in front of his laptop, searching for the weird and hopefully-won’t-kill-us. Castiel returned to his recent, self-appointed task of plainly labeling the Men of Letter’s many artifacts that were currently in Enochian-etched boxes or other obscure packaging.

Sam was halfway through an article about what looked like a possessed doll—one of those creepy Victorian things with the eyes—when Dean came back with supplies, including a box of fried chicken and two six-packs of beer. What followed was a pretty ordinary dinner, a decision to keep an eye on the doll story, and Sam, suddenly exhausted from the day, taking a shower and hitting the sheets early.

He figured it was around 2 a.m. when Dean shook him awake.

“What?” Sam said, sitting up in bed and blinking as Dean stood up straight, crossed his arms, and glared at him with open anger. “What?” he repeated.

“What? You screw around with me and Cass and you want to know what?”

“What?”

“Sam,” the hunter growled.

“I wasn’t screwing around with you and Cass. I want you to be happy.”

“And just how is me doing the mattress mambo with our best friend supposed to make me happy? Cass is our brother, Sam, not some skirt in a bar.”

Sam pointed at him. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s all sex has been for you since Lisa, some skirt in a bar. And lately, you haven’t even been bothered to do that. I mean, seriously. Can you even remember the last time you had a conversation with someone before you took her to bed?”

“Look, I’m sorry it didn’t work out with you and Eileen, but—”

“First, this has nothing to do with Eileen.” Sam scowled at the bed and then got out, standing two feet from his brother and crossing his own arms. “Second, I haven’t given up on Eileen, not by a long shot. I’m hoping like I haven’t been able to hope for anything for a very long time that she’s going to come back here and say she wants to take a shot.”

Dean frowned at him. “So, you think maybe you’ve found the future Mrs. Winchester and you think me and Cass should round things off?”

“This has nothing to do with me or Eileen or anything other than just you and Castiel.” Sam shrugged and put his hands out. “Think about it, Dean. No one on this planet besides me loves you as deeply as Cass does. Think about what you might be throwing away here.”

“Dean isn’t throwing anything away,” Cass said from the still-open doorway.

The two brothers turned to face him.

“I couldn’t help overhearing. I am a celestial entity.”

“What do you mean, I’m not throwing anything away?”

“Sam’s suggestion that you and I pursue a physical, romantic relationship is understandable, Dean. It is just also out of the question. As such, your refusal to entertain the possibility is not the actin of throwing anything away.”

“Romantic?” Jack asked, popping up in the doorway. “You and Castiel?”

“No, not me and Castiel,” Dean said.

“Jack, this really isn’t a conversation for you,” Cass said.

“Two of my fathers are thinking about getting together. I think this conversation is for me.”

“Jack,” Dean said. “Listen closely. Cass and I are not thinking about any such thing.”

“Why not?” Jack asked. “You two are perfect for each other.”

“Jack!” Dean looked horrified. “Cass is, yeah, not a man, but he’s close enough!”

“Close enough for what?”

“To make us not perfect for each other!”

Jack looked disappointed. “You’re holding his vessel’s gender against him?”

Cass shook his head and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Sexual orientation is not a question of bigotry, Jack. Dean’s heterosexuality is central to his personal identity and not some personality flaw.”

“But.” Jack shook his head and turned to look at them all with sad eyes. Then a thought struck him, and he turned back to the angel. “Is this about what the Shadow said?”

“The Shadow?” Sam asked.

“Jack,” Castiel warned.

“No!” Jack took a step back. “I’m tired of secrets and lies. How are we supposed to fight God when we can’t be honest?”

“Jack, I told you—”

Jack turned to face Sam and Dean. “Castiel gave up his life to get me back from the Empty. He asked me not to tell you, so you wouldn’t worry.” He looked back to Cass. “I’m sorry, but they should know.”

“But you’re still here,” Dean told Cass.

“She said she wouldn’t take him until he was happy. So I figure, you guys make each other happy, and Cass is thinking the Shadow will come and take him away, this time for good.”

“Hell, Cass,” Dean said.

“You should have told us,” Sam added.

“Jack is wrong.” The angel shook his head, looked around the room, and then seemed to settle in place. “The Shadow’s threat cannot dictate my life. If it comes for me, it comes.” He shot Jack an irritated look. “There was no need to mention that.”

“But if Dean made you happy—”

“I would be more than willing to risk the Shadow for Dean’s sake. My decision not to pursue the matter has to do with Dean’s feelings, not my fears.”

Jack turned pained eyes to Dean. “But it’s _Cass_. You love him, and he loves you.”

“Kid, seriously, this just isn’t how it works,” Dean said.

“Couldn’t you kiss him and see how it goes?”

“Jack!” Castiel looked angry now. “I never thought I would need to explain this to you, but no means no.”

“Dean never actually said no,” Sam said, after which three frowning faces turned to him. Sam shrugged. “You said it for him, Cass.”

“Really?” Jack asked.

“And if it is absolutely no,” Sam told Dean, “then why are you waking me up in the middle of the night to talk about it?”

Three frowns were now directed Dean’s way. Then Cass cleared his face and gently shook his head.

“Just affirm that you’re not interested, in fact, you’re repulsed by the very idea, and I believe I can promise none of us will ever bring the matter up again.”

Dean looked at all of them, half-shrugged, rubbed his neck, and then half-shrugged again. “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m repulsed.”

“All right!” Jack said with a wide smile.

“Dean?” Sam said, smiling as well.

Dean put up his hands. “No, I mean, I’m not saying yes, OK? I’m just, I’m just—I don’t know what I am.”

“Confused is what you are, Dean,” Cass said. “It’s very late. You need to sleep.”

“You should help him!” Jack said.

“What?” Cass asked.

“You know, hold him while he’s sleeping and stuff.”

“Jack, we don’t want to be that intrusive,” Sam said.

“Oh, now you think you’re being intrusive?” Dean demanded.

“I remember from my mother, she was really sad she wouldn’t be able to tuck me in at night.”

“That’s not how we’re trying to get Dean and Cass to think about each other,” Sam said.

“Dean and Cass will think about each other the way that Dean and Cass choose to think about each other!” Dean bellowed.

Five seconds of silence passed. No one missed them.

“I believe it’s time that everyone who sleeps goes to bed,” Cass said, putting his hand back on Jack’s shoulder to turn him around and shove him out of the room. “Alone.” The angel then followed Jack. Dean and Sam looked at each other for a moment before Dean seemed to realize he was the one in the wrong room. Without a word, he turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

With nothing else to do, for the time being, Sam went back to bed.

***

The next day, Sam decided, would be his eternal benchmark for “awkward.”

For starters, Castiel’s eyes kept getting big. When someone spoke to him, when he would see Dean, when Jack would ask overly innocent questions about how Cass was doing, and just at seemingly random moments, those blue eyes would get large and stay that way for a good five minutes at a time.

Then there was Jack, asking not just questions about Castiel’s well-being, but also about what made for a romantic dinner, and how people typically met up, and whether online dates really were all serial killers, and was he old enough to start dating?

Dean just stalked around without saying a word.

So, it was with met with nothing less than incredible relief when Sam’s notifications _dinged_ around noon. The possessed doll had evidently taken another victim.

“We’ve got a case,” Sam called out to the others, who, he noted, almost ran to the library table.

“Jane Turabian was found dead last night in her three-bedroom apartment only twelve hours after she took possession of a $40,000 Kia The Water Nymph doll sold at auction. Police found her lying face-down in a pool of her own blood in her bathroom. Regardless of all the art and electronics in the place, the only thing missing was the doll.”

“So?” Dean asked.

“So, three days ago, Collin Woodrow was found in the same position after just having purchased a $35,000 Brinns Victorian doll at auction. Again, nothing was missing except the doll.”

“I thought dolls were available for $10 at toy stores and the Gas ‘n Sip,” Jack said.

“They are,” Castiel told him. “But some dolls are rare, and so people pay more for them.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“All right,” Sam said. “Jane and Collin both lived in Lewisville, Texas, a suburb outside Dallas-Fort Worth.”

“That’s about seven hours,” Dean said. “We leave in ten.”

Everyone went to go pack.

Somehow, the same four people who were unable to breathe normally in the Bunker were fine in the car. It might have had something to do with Dean’s metal head concert, but there was also the lunch break where Sam and Dean got tacos while Jack talked about how it reminded him of Heaven. And for some reason they all laughed their asses off at a Texas billboard warning that the Theory of Evolution was the work of the Devil.

It was probably Sam’s comment that the theory wasn’t kinky enough for Crowley that did it.

Rolling into Lewisville felt, oddly, like coming home. It was another town with nothing remarkable in it, perhaps a little more suburbia than they were prone to, but refreshing in its sameness. After a nothing dinner at, of course, the Main Street Café, Dean found them an Econo Lodge, and the two humans hit the sack while the angel and Nephilim kept watch over Jack’s laptop.

Sam had no idea what time it was when the whispering woke him up.

“These things are all much more complicated than your current understanding of human interaction appreciates.”

“But it’s very simple.”

“Only because you’re adding things in your head as though they have no will of their own. Put two apples together in a bag, then five days later take them out, and you still have two apples. They’ve done nothing in the meantime. Living creatures, let alone humans, don’t function that way.”

“But you’ve told me again and again how important love is.”

“Yes, but one form of love can be nothing like another form of love. Humans love ice cream. They love a song. They love their children. They love to hate fictional characters. Dean’s affection for me is familial, not romantic.”

“But—”

“Jack, you need to understand.” At this point, Castiel dropped his voice so low and quiet Sam had to strain to hear. “There is absolutely nothing in the world I hold dearer than my friendship with Sam and Dean and you. They are my brothers, and you are my son. You told them about my deal with the Shadow, but what you didn’t tell them, what perhaps you still don’t understand, is that I would make that deal a hundred times over. And I would do the same for Dean or for Sam.

“For thousands of years, I was a good soldier. I won incredible battles, and I reaped incredible rewards. But none of that means as much to me as does my relationship with you three. Over and over, I have tried to explain to my angelic brothers and sisters how empty our lives are before we know love. And over and over I have failed. I wish I knew why.”

“Castiel, after all this time, do you still not understand that you are special?”

“I’m just an angel, Jack. Whenever I’ve lost track of that, tragedy has ensued.”

“That doesn’t change the facts. I mean, my grandfather brought you back over and over, right?”

“To help Sam and Dean.”

“I don’t think that was all there was to it. But anyway, I’ve met several angels now, and you’re not like them. They’re wind-up toys, little soldiers who need orders or they just start killing everything around them. You have a heart, and a conscience.”

“Well, thank you for that, but—”

“And I know the Shadow may be listening, but I want you to be happy, Cass. I want you and Dean and Sam to be happy.”

A long moment passed, during which Sam felt sleep tug at him once or twice. Before he went under, he did hear Castiel say: “I want you to happy too, but as I’ve told you before, that’s not really what our lives are about.”


	6. Chapter 6

Seventeen hours later, Sam was pretty sure he was about to die.

For one thing, he’d been shot in the stomach, which pretty much hurt as much as anything ever hurt, which was saying a lot for a guy who’d been in Lucifer’s Cage. For another, he had no idea where Dean was, which was just all kinds of wrong. Last he’d seen, his brother had been running away from some creepy-ass porcelain doll with a seriously anti-social personality.

Castiel and Jack were off in another part of town talking to Collin Woodrow’s wife.

So yeah, he was about to die, and there was this incredibly stupid knife-wielding $100,000 bear plodding toward him one slow, fleece-padded step after another. Some part of Sam’s brain was particularly irritated that the demonic plushy was purple.

But in the next second, the Beanie Baby went _bang_, and Cass and Jack were there in the dark basement with him, joining hands as Cass healed Sam’s gut wound.

“Dean is pinned down,” Cass said. “We need to hurry.”

Sam nodded and followed the others down a corridor that he was really hoping led to Dean. He couldn’t help thinking that he’d almost died so often it was getting kind of boring. He tried to shake it off and get his head back in the fight, but mostly he just thought about how he seriously needed to have a long talk with Eileen.

They found Dean surrounded by a bisque doll that kind of looked like Elizabeth I, a Barbie with a ball gown and tiara, and an original G.I. Joe, all of them wielding bazookas, With some spell work from Cass and a few well-placed swipes of Sam’s machete, they were soon a jumble of porcelain arms and plastic legs. 

“Stop killing my children!” a woman’s shrill voice screamed from their right, toward which they all turned. Some sort of force struck him, flinging him on his back. After a dazed moment of vulnerability, he could look up to see Castiel fighting against the force, walking step by step toward the purple-glowing witch with her hand raised. With a final leap, he was on her, and with one motion downward, the celestial warrior had stabbed her through the heart.

“Cass!” Dean called, and the angel twirled around to run to him, helping him prop up on his elbows.

“Dean,” Castiel said with concern, then laid his hand on the man’s face.

“I’m all right,” the hunter said, trying to shake the hand off. “I’ll be fine.”

Cass just scowled and pressed his hand harder to Dean until whatever was wrong with his friend had been healed to his satisfaction. Dean stood easily after that, frowning.

“You need to save that stuff, man.”

“And you need to be at your best. I’m feeling more magic around here.”

They split up again, though this time Sam took Jack. Cass and Dean were still glaring (or whatever that was) at each other.

“Can you sense whatever is it?” Sam asked Jack as they walked carefully down another corridor. Just how big was this basement, anyway?

“Yes, and it’s very dark, very powerful, but disorganized.” Jack shook his head, frowning. “It feels lost.”

Sam nodded, looking into the dark.

“So, why can’t Dean love Castiel like that” Jack asked.

“Some other time, Jack.”

They walked forward another few feet.

“Dean obviously cares for Castiel as much as he cares for any of us. More even, in some ways.”

“That’s the point. Some ways of loving just aren’t the same as others. Dean isn’t attracted to Castiel.”

“So he loves strange women in bars more than Castiel?”

Sam sighed in frustration.

“Look—”

Something came out of the dark right toward Sam’s head. He was able to duck it, but he felt it whip through his hair. Then came a sort of hic-cup and wail, which he and Jack ran toward (proving once again that hunters often lack basic survival instincts).

They found a box that looked like a makeshift crib, and inside it, wrapped in little blankets, was an antique baby doll, its eyes glowing faintly purple. Another object—a plastic baby bottle—came at him, striking him in the chest with a force that would have killed him if it hadn’t been so lightweight. Still stung.

The baby doll glowed more and growled.

“OK, enough of that,” Sam said, chopping it into pieces with his demon knife until Jack said he no longer felt magic around them.

After scattering the bits of the thing around, he and Jack turned back, following Jack’s sense of Castiel’s presence. Sam felt Jack getting ready with another question when the faint sounds of conversation reached them.

“…not what I mean,” they heard Castiel say.

“Look, it’s a physical issue,” Dean responded. “It makes sense to resolve it physically.”

“What? I’m just supposed to go along with copulation to see how you like it?”

“Who said anything about copulation, Mr. First Date? There are a lot of steps between here and there.”

“But just what is ‘here,’ Dean?”

Sam knew he should call out, but Jack looked delighted (Surely he had a bit of a soul left to look that happy?), and for once Sam decided to take the moral low ground.

“Cass, just, can you stand still for just a second?”

There was silence for a good ten seconds.

“Oh,” Dean said, sounding disappointed. “You didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t kiss back, Cass.”

“You told me to stand still.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

The silence went on for quite a bit longer and was finally broken by a soft moan.

“Dean,” Castiel said, sounding breathless. “Sam and Jack are nearby.”

“Sam! The thing dead, whatever it was?”

“Yes, Dean!”

“Very dead!” Jack added, almost giggling.

“Then, uh, we’ll meet you back at the car, OK? Give us ten minutes!”

“Take an hour, you guys.” Sam laughed, patting Jack on the shoulder. “Take the rest of the day!”

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kind words! Do you think this needs a sequel? Or is it good?


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